The New Jerusalem | Page 5

desire to
achieve, and sometimes only desire to desire. In a word, an equal
citizenship is quite the reverse of the reality in the modern world; but it
is still the ideal in the modern world. At any rate it has no other ideal. If
the figure that has alighted on the column in the Place de la Bastille be
indeed the spirit of liberty, it must see a million growths in a modern
city to make it wish to fly back again into heaven. But our secular
society would not know what goddess to put on the pillar in its place.
As I looked at that sculptured goddess on that classical column, my
mind went back another historic stage, and I asked myself where this
classic and republican ideal came from, and the answer was equally
clear. The place from which it had come was the place to which I was
going; Rome. And it was not until I had reached Rome that I
adequately realised the next great reality that simplified the whole story,
and even this particular part of the story. I know nothing more abruptly
arresting than that sudden steepness, as of streets scaling the sky, where
stands, now cased in tile and brick and stone, that small rock that rose
and overshadowed the whole earth; the Capitol. Here in the grey dawn
of our history sat the strong Republic that set her foot upon the necks of
kings; and it was from here assuredly that the spirit of the Republic

flew like an eagle to alight on that far-off pillar in the country of the
Gauls. For it ought to be remembered (and it is too often forgotten) that
if Paris inherited what may be called the authority of Rome, it is
equally true that Rome anticipated all that is sometimes called the
anarchy of Paris. The expansion of the Roman Empire was
accompanied by a sort of permanent Roman Revolution, fully as
furious as the French Revolution. So long as the Roman system was
really strong, it was full of riots and mobs and democratic divisions;
and any number of Bastilles fell as the temple of the victories rose. But
though I had but a hurried glance at such things, there were among
them some that further aided the solution of the problem. I saw the
larger achievements of the later Romans; and the lesson that was still
lacking was plainly there. I saw the Coliseum, a monument of that love
of looking on at athletic sports, which is noted as a sign of decadence in
the Roman Empire and of energy in the British Empire. I saw the Baths
of Caracalla, witnessing to a cult of cleanliness, adduced also to prove
the luxury of Ancient Romans and the simplicity of Anglo-Saxons. All
it really proves either way is a love of washing on a large scale; which
might merely indicate that Caracalla, like other Emperors, was a lunatic.
But indeed what such things do indicate, if only indirectly, is
something which is here much more important. They indicate not only
a sincerity in the public spirit, but a certain smoothness in the public
services. In a word, while there were many revolutions, there were no
strikes. The citizens were often rebels; but there were men who were
not rebels, because they were not citizens. The ancient world forced a
number of people to do the work of the world first, before it allowed
more privileged people to fight about the government of the world. The
truth is trite enough, of course; it is in the single word Slavery, which is
not the name of a crime like Simony, but rather of a scheme like
Socialism. Sometimes very like Socialism.
Only standing idly on one of those grassy mounds under one of those
broken arches, I suddenly saw the Labour problem of London, as I
could not see it in London. I do not mean that I saw which side was
right, or what solution was reliable, or any partisan points or repartees,
or any practical details about practical difficulties. I mean that I saw
what it was; the thing itself and the whole thing. The Labour problem

of to-day stood up quite simply, like a peak at which a man looks back
and sees single and solid, though when he was walking over it it was a
wilderness of rocks. The Labour problem is the attempt to have the
democracy of Paris without the slavery of Rome. Between the Roman
Republic and the French Republic something had happened. Whatever
else it was, it was the abandonment of the ancient and fundamental
human habit of slavery; the numbering of men for necessary labour as
the normal foundation of society, even a society in which citizens were